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Summary: Well written history
Comment: This book was quite interesting in terms of historical facts. I personally found it a bit dry.
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Summary: Talking Turkey
Comment: Starvation concentrates the mind, and drives men to extremes. Nathaniel Philbrick has demonstrated this historical fact aptly in two recent works, the superb "In the Heart of the Sea" and now with "Mayflower", a disciplined and engaging re-working of the legend of the first pilgrims. Philbrick seems interested in characters whose hunger transcends the corporeal, however. His portraits of the both the celebrated and more obscure scions of the Bradfords, Standishes, Churches and others all depict personalities who share an innate drive, an appetite for both worldly and divine discovery and conquest the propels them through direst misery and into the formidable portal of a wild new world.
Philbrick lingers over the original patchwork motivations of the pilgrims, a mixture of economic and religious grievances that drove strange but determined alliances. In so doing he reveals main historical characters with a clarity of purpose and vision that would serve them well during their travails in the new world. He moves through the well-worn tale of the woeful journey and the first winter with dispatch, seeming eager to detail the far less examined story of the Indian alliances that motivated the benificent first feast and set the stage for the burgeoning and threatening European population that followed.
With a historian's expertise and aplomb Philbrick narrates the relationships among Massasoit, Squanto, Bradford and Standish, but takes things much further, continuing the narrative through fifty years of settlement and war, up to an excellent recounting of the virtually forgotten King Philip's war. Sometimes the narrative gets bogged down and requires a couple of re-readings to get the names, places, battles, and relationships straight, but it's well worth it. This is a disciplined work, and requires a commitment on the part of the reader to meet the author half-way. That said, many of the anecdotes that sprout through the cracks of the story stand on their own, moments when the book comes to real, almost novelistic color.
At the least anyone will come away with a valuable new perspective on this country's origins, in turn bloody, noble, and enterprising. The author's passion for the subject, always crucial for a work like this, shines through. And in the end, expect it to leave you hungry for more.
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Summary: Whole Pilgrim Story Well Told
Comment: As Nathaniel Philbrick has done in his other books, he tells a thorough and thoroughly enjoyable history in his book Mayflower. This is the story of the pilgrims, the whole story, from voyage through absorption by the Massachusetts Bay Colony after decades of carving a home for themselves in the new American wilderness.
I had always wanted to know more of the pilgrim story after the initial landing and first winter survival. This book not only details the voyage of these English religious refugees as well as their landing, but also how they struggled to hew a home amidst Indians in a new and often unforgiving environment. The book also details how a relative situation of coexistence with the native Indians deteriorated into conflict and annihilation as a result of King Phillip's War.
We see the Pilgrims landing and making their first forays along the coast in those tentative days after making landfall near Plymouth Rock (not at it, as popular history suggests), as well as the struggle to build a community and elbow some living room among existing and often warring native people. Philbrick tells the story of their building of community and government and of gradual expansion as more settlers are brought over to establish farms and satellite communities in the following years. This well told portrait of the very early existence of colonists will fill the gap for the average reader who usually skips from Jamestown and Plymouth right to the making of the Declaration of Independence in school and general histories.
King Phillip's War was a seminal event in our nation's history. Although being squeezed by immigration, it was not dictated that at least a longer period of coexistence between European and American Indian cold not have occurred. When King Phillip took up war to strike at the encroaching colonists he lit a fuse that ended the Indian era in Massachusetts and coastal New England. That war united colonial settlements that had largely been sharing space in coastal Massachusetts but keeping to their own spheres and proved the downfall of powerful Indian tribes that had been holding onto their own areas through diplomacy and balance of power politics to some extent.
Philbrick writes well and does an excellent job of giving voice to his characters as well as interestingly explaining the times and lives of these early settlers.
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Summary: Must Read for all Historians and Humanities Students
Comment: To one who enjoys historical people and places, particularly the adventures of Early Europeans in America, Mr. Philbrick's book, Mayflower is as delicious as ice cream and chocolate. This account of the pilgrims' voyage to the east coast of the New World is incredibly rich in detail and day-by-day reports of their landing and exploration, beginning with the Puritans who had gathered in Holland working toward departure. The lives, ilnesses and death aboard the Mayflower before their arrival in the New World and the appalling harships there, cause the reader to once more wonder at the bravery of these 17th Century pilgrims who dared the unknown. Of particular interest to this reader are the intricate accounts of motives that lay behind misunderstandings and cultural conflicts between Europeans and indigenous peoples.
Their subsequent struggles creating the Plymouth Colony, the successes and failures at scratching basic necessities, food and shelter, from the bare and often barren land that was to be their home. This book also shines a light on the courage of our forefathers and mothers carving a place for themselves in an often hostile environment. Mr. Philbrick's carful presenttion of these individual, men, woman, and children, faced with hostile indigenous peoples, epidemic plagues, and multiple wars has perhaps never been presented so clearly.
For the authors's consummate scholarship (e.g., 50 pages of notes and 28 pages of bibliography) and his spare, elegant style, this book should be on the shelf of every American historian and humanities student.
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Summary: The original boat people
Comment: It sounds a lot like current events. A group of refugees, fleeing from their homeland in a leaking boat, arrive in America. They are initially welcomed by the local population (Native Americans in this case), overcome various adversities, and end up in conflict with the original residents as they compete for available resources. People complaining about immigrants should read some of their own history.
I bought this book to read about some of my ancestors (William Bradford, Richard Warren, John Howland, and possibly others) who were on the Mayflower. The book provides an interesting and detailed account, from their original problems in Europe to the end of King Philip's War when they killed or enslaved the Native Americans whom they displaced.
I was already familiar with the general details, but the author provides a well written account of events.
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